26 May 2005

I'm working on Study 4 for the video, "Installation of Wholeo Dome at The Farm School". The topic is a walk around the Ecovillage Training Center (ETC), which is less than a mile from the dome. The ETC displays the creative and sustainable juices that welcomed the dome and helped in its rebirth. To date, I've gathered my still images to integrate with Martin Duffy's video next week.

I am not going to get hung up on wondering about people who say, "Do not use that embryo for science, that would be to destroy life. But it is OK to discard it". Many of the same people vote for guns and weapons and wars whose purpose is to destroy human life: from embryos to real fully-developed human beings.

I will associate with the word medium. I like it. I could see myself as a medium in measure, life, art transport, or channeling. In measure: average size. In life: the negatives balance the positives to average out about a medium amount of accomplishment. As a vehicle for pigments or ideas in creating an art work, I would like to be that kind of medium. A medium, in the sense of being a channel between far-out dimly-sensed messages and bringing them down to earth, definitely.

19 May 2005

Since 1999, a Danish friend has asked for a recording of Elizabeth's laugh. I tried once with a tape recorder when we met in a coffee house, but the background noise overwhelmed our conversation. Last fall we made a video interview of Elizabeth on Wholeo Dome. It's peppered with great laughs. This week I put them end-to-end in video and audio files (your choice). The laugh-only total time is less than a minute, but feels full. They are here, under Study 3. The URL is

http://www.wholeo.net/Trips/Wholeo/GlassDome/location/
movies/studies/wdatfsInstallStudy.htm#s3

I have a vague memory of an all-laugh record, 78 rpm, about 50-60 years ago. When the phonograph needle wore out, I played records with a sharpened toothpick. It might have been by Spike Jones. All laughs are good for laughs.

In the new elizalaugh movie, I experimented with video filters to distinguish the different clips and to emphasize the laugh character. Doing so reminded me of when we first got multiple fonts on the computer and printer. Many of us used fonts lavishly, changing mid-sentence to embellish phrases and single words, especially in display graphics. That quickly became garish and tasteless. It was a short-lived flowery font flourishing. I suppose my effusive filtering heads for the same future trash bin. I ask that you filter your viewing as long as it is a video study. Actually, I enjoy the effects and will improve them with use.

12 May 2005

I finally got a photo of this large wall hanging (91"w x 81"h) and so I present, "Lila and the Red Hand", an image of a dream. The dream happened on a magical trip to Mt. Shasta in California for New Year's eve, 31 December, 1978. The page has links to many other Red Hands on my site, including a new image of a stained glass version.

Doing a web search on "red hand" was disturbing. Up front were terrorists using the term. The ancient archetype apparently has been subverted.

Having a cataract removed from my right eye and getting a new plastic interocular lens has made the world look sharp and brilliant. It's like calibrating one of the screens on a dual-monitor system. It's like setting the white point correctly. Now the previously better eye (or screen) display looks dull, fuzzy, and yellowish. I wonder how my web pages and images were colored previous to the breakthrough surgery? When I get both eyes done, I must review the site. I might be forced to abandon or redo it completely. I'm hoping since colors are relative to each other, that my choices were not too far off.

5 May 2005

I like the theme of Ars Electronia this year: Hybrid - living in paradox. For details, see www.aec.at/hybrid. Each year after all the entries for the Prix are in, they (creators of the festival located in Linz, Austria) come up with the theme and title. My entry happens to fit well, being a hybrid of movie and photo, of landscape and inner vision. Of individual and group. Of local and global. As an example in my life, I chose a hybrid car, a Honda Insight. From gas and momentum, it generates electricity and the car runs on both.

This week I had cataract surgery on my right eye, limiting time for web work on the computer. I did get QuickTime 7 for Mac OS X, a free upgrade from apple.com. Windows version will be available soon. QT7 includes an H.264 codec for better delivery of movies on the web. On first test, H.264 is better than MPEG-4 in terms of image quality and smaller filesize. I added it as an alternative to this movie: wdatfs Studies in Video.

Changes made to intro to Wholeo Dome.

Weekly postings going blog

Every Thursday, I publish something on wholeo.net. There's a little picture on the first page linking to the Wholeo Online news and history page, where there are short descriptions and links to new work. Now I'll blog it and say a little more, starting next Thursday.